WAYS OF NATURE 
bodies touched. Moreover, a large number of them 
were constantly on the wing, showing against the 
sky light as if they were leaving the chimney. But 
they did not leave it. They rose up a few feet and 
then resumed their positions upon the sides, and it 
was this movement that caused the humming sound. 
All the while the droppings of the birds came down 
like a summer shower. At the bottom of the shaft 
was a mine of guano three or four feet deep, with a 
dead swift here and there upon it. Probably one or 
more birds out of such a multitude died every night. 
I had fancied there would be many more. It was a 
long time before it dawned upon me what this unin- 
terrupted flight within the chimney meant. Finally 
Isaw that it was a sanitary measure: only thus could 
the birds keep from soiling each other with their 
droppings. Birds digest very rapidly, and had they 
all continued to cling to the sides of the wall, they 
would have been in a sad predicament before morn- 
ing. Like other acts of cleanliness on the part of 
birds, this was doubtless the prompting of instinct 
and not of judgment. It was Nature looking out for 
her own. 
In view, then, of the doubtful sense or intelligence 
of the wild creatures, what shall we say of the new 
school of nature writers or natural history roman- 
cers that has lately arisen, and that reads into the 
birds and animals almost the entire human psycho- 
logy? This, surely: so far as these writers awaken an 
13 
